


Eyes on the Horizon

by ScarlettSiren



Category: ATEEZ (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Fic Fest, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, New Year's Eve, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23942713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarlettSiren/pseuds/ScarlettSiren
Summary: Wooyoung’s job has taken him to all sorts of places, across the far reaches of the cosmos. He’s seen what feels like every corner of the universe, from the cloud cities of Venus to the diamond rainstorms of Neptune and beyond.But tonight, Wooyoung just wants to make ithome.
Relationships: Jung Wooyoung/Song Mingi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 125
Collections: Wooyoung Love Central Fic Fest 2019





	Eyes on the Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> I said I wouldn’t sign up for more fests and yet, here I am. I had Prompt #049
> 
> Pairing: Jung Wooyoung/Any  
> Prompt: There's no place like home. — Wooyoung just wants to make it back home to B for New Years. In which Wooyoung is an intergalactic space traveler for his job, and B lives on Earth.

The instrument panel of the  _ Aurora  _ squawks loudly as they exit their lightspeed jump, a high-pitched, adamant sound meant to warn the crew of danger.

Wooyoung just bleats a complaint from his chair, unbuckling the straps and flinging them off before launching himself toward the panel through the zero-gravity environment of the ship.

“I swear to the  _ stars  _ if it’s  _ another  _ asteroid storm—”

From the captain’s chair, Hongjoong curses under his breath and unclasps from his own. “Wooyoung! I didn’t give the order to release restraints, I swear—”

“Cut him some slack, Captain. He’s anxious to get home.” Seonghwa chides, sliding from his own chair with his usual effortless poise.

“Is it another storm?” Hongjoong clarifies, dropping his complaints for the time being.

“Afraid so. This one looks minor, though.” San, their pilot, assures. “I’ll get us through it.”

“What’s our ETA?” Wooyoung asks anxiously.

San prods a few buttons on the display in front of him. “Barring nothing catastrophic, or any landing permission delays, I’d say around fourteen-hundred hours.”

Wooyoung quickly does the math in his head. “It’ll be almost midnight at home, then...I mean, an  _ hour  _ to get through inspections, customs  _ and  _ traffic? That’s pushing it.”

“What’s wrong?” Asks Yunho, the ship’s engineer, as he joins them on the flight deck.

“Youngie’s worried he might not make it home in time.” San tells him.

Yunho frowns, a truly sympathetic look in his eyes. “Oh no...I know you really wanted to get back in time for once…”

“That’s the job, unfortunately.” San murmurs regretfully.

San, of course, is right.

Their job is high-risk and high-reward; transporting valuable goods and supplies between planets and moon-bases. Intergalactic couriers.

It’s true that Wooyoung’s job has taken him to all sorts of places, across the far reaches of the cosmos. He’s seen what feels like every corner of the universe, from the cloud cities of Venus to the diamond rainstorms of Neptune and beyond.

But tonight, Wooyoung just wants to make it  _ home. _

Most of his crew is lucky. San and Yunho met on the job, Seonghwa and Hongjoong well before that—and while Wooyoung wouldn’t usually consider relationships among coworkers, in their business, it seems the better alternative. Their flight patterns often keep them away from home for months at a time, and at certain distances, live video calls become impossible. Being in a relationship with someone on earth ends up being a game of video-tag, and Wooyoung could not count on both hands the number of times he’s watched the ones sent to him by his boyfriend back in South Korea.

Mingi, unfortunately, cannot work in his trade.

His vision is too poor—and while laser eye surgery could fix it, Mingi is  _ terrified  _ of the very idea—as well as having a back injury that could be exacerbated by exposure to zero-g environments. Working beyond the atmosphere just isn’t an option for him.

But Mingi has always been a down-to-Earth guy as it is. It suits him. He keeps Wooyoung grounded. They balance each other out. Wooyoung’s been gone for too damn long, and he’s starting to let his more reckless crewmates rub off on him. He just needs to be  _ home,  _ find his center, recalibrate a little.

But if he’s not home in time, then it feels like he’s failed. 

The thing is, it’s New Year’s Eve on earth. That might seem like a meaningless holiday to someone like him, whose job sends him to planets that only orbit the sun once every four-thousand days. But his Most Important Person is on earth—and it’s his home, after all—so he can’t help but to still consider it a holiday, even when the sun and the earth are a mere pinprick in their spacecraft’s HUD.

Wooyoung huffs out a frustrated sigh and grabs his com, storming off the bridge.

His captain and the others let him go.

***

It only takes two rings to connect, hardly a delay when he’s this close. When he’s off in the far reaches of space, they can do little more than send pre-recorded videos, not even able to interact with each other in real-time due to the delay in the data transfers. Wooyoung spends too many nights recording himself talking to his computer and wishing Mingi could answer right back. It’s rare for a job to keep him in standard communications range, where the satellites can reach.

“Babe! Hey! You’re back in orbit?” Mingi answers, eager tone so vivid that Wooyoung can picture his bright smile, Wooyoung’s  _ favorite  _ smile.

“Not quite, we’re a little ways out. Just in range of the relay sats. There’s an asteroid field we have to navigate through first.”

It’s pretty obvious, too. The connection is on the fritz, the asteroids interrupting the signal bouncing between the satellites.

“Oh. So you’re...not gonna make it?” Mingi asks, his excitement draining out of him all at once.

“It’s pretty much impossible at this point. I’m sorry, babe.” Wooyoung sighs.

“Well, you’ll still be here tomorrow, and we can spend the day together! We can go out, that one place you love opened back up after renovations—”

“It’s a holiday, everything’s gonna be closed.” Wooyoung mumbles in frustration.

“Oh.” Mingi swallows. “Well, in the meantime, you can just stay on comlink with me until it hits midnight?”

“I could, but I’m getting a ton of interference from an asteroid storm, so I don’t know how long you’ll actually have me for.”

Mingi pouts. “The universe hates us.”

“No, babe, it’s just this whole job’s been a mess.” Wooyoung grumbles.

Mingi responds, but the entire message is garbled. He spends a little while trying to get the connection back, but it’s clearly not improving. Wooyoung apologizes, hoping something intelligible gets through before he disconnects.

Fuck everything. Wooyoung feels the urge to break something well up in his chest but he takes a deep breath and tamps it down, exhaling slowly.

By the time his captain knocks on the wall next to the open door, he feels slightly less murderous.

“San got us through the field. We touch down in ten.” Hongjoong tells him.

Wooyoung cannot help the tendril of hope that sprouts in his chest, then, despite the circumstances. “So then—”

“If we don’t have a complete rules-junkie at the customs counter, you might make it home in time to see your boy by midnight. But no promises.” Hongjoong replies. “Now get strapped back in for landing.”

“Yessir!” Wooyoung practically sings, booking it toward the bridge.

Hongjoong shakes his head, but he wears an understanding smile.

***

Their landing is smooth. He’s the first out the door behind the captain and first mate, which isn’t general procedure, but they’re taking pity on him.

When he sees it’s Changbin behind the counter, Wooyoung could have literally leapt for joy.

“Binnie!” He pipes up, smiling brightly. “Listen, Mingi’s waiting for me and if I don’t catch the next tram I will  _ never  _ make it to the condos in time so I’m just gonna—”

Wooyoung casually slips through the metal detector, waving for show and turning out his pockets when it doesn’t beep.

Changbin sighs. “Wait, Wooyoung, there’s still procedure—”

“I owe you my life!” He calls back as he skips toward the tram station.

“Yeah you do.” Changbin grumbles, turning to Hongjoong, who just shrugs. “All right, inventory dossier?”

Wooyoung is pretty sure he could get arrested for doing that if it had been anyone else, but Changbin is chill. Plus Hongjoong will cover for him. Probably.

He jogs to the tram station and waits an agonizing seven minutes for it to arrive. The ride feels even longer, even though they move quite quickly and they’re on an express schedule due to the time of night. He manically switches from watching the time on his com to watching the LED map display in the top edge of the tram car, bouncing his leg.

He’s not gonna make it.

By the time the tram pulls up to his stop, he has scant minutes to get into the building and up to the fifth floor. He blazes through the tram car and the station, bolting across the street without waiting for the crosswalk. There’s hardly any traffic thankfully, and he books it the block and a half to their building. He swipes his keycard to gain entry to the lobby door, then again for the elevator. Thankfully, there’s one waiting.

He has to swipe it again for his floor, jabbing the button repeatedly as though it’ll help. The doors close too slowly for his liking and the elevator car finally starts to rise.

He pulls out his com again, the time showing him it’s already 11:59. He has less than thirty seconds. Fuck.

There’s no way he makes it in time. The elevator seems to move so slowly, and he idly wonders if he could have made the stairs faster.

(The notion is utterly ridiculous, but he would have tried—for Mingi.) 

The elevator beeps as he reaches their floor. He bursts through the doors before they’re fully opened, booking it to the left.

_ Five... _

Wooyoung isn’t going to make it.

_ Four... _

The hallway seems to stretch on forever as he runs, takes the corner so fast that he nearly trips. He spots the door to the familiar apartment and throws himself at it.

_ Three... _

He frantically punches his code into the keypad lock, somehow managing not to make an error in his haste. When the light turns green, he yanks it open.

_ Two... _

Mingi is standing. Pacing. His com is cradled in one hand and he’s staring at it with a melancholy scrunch in his brow. When he hears the door, he looks up. His eyes go wide behind his round-framed glasses, his mouth dropping open in confusion.

_ One. _

Wooyoung leaps.

He often forgets that while Mingi isn’t small, he also isn’t strong. Mingi, though his face is painted with surprise and shock, manages to put his arms out in time to catch Wooyoung, but they both still end up on the floor. The carpet thankfully catches them as they tumble, Mingi sputtering in confusion.

“Youngie! You’re here? But you—I thought—”

“Kiss me first.” Wooyoung cuts him off, pressing their lips together.

Mingi lets out a soft hum of delight, kissing him back.

Outside the window, the crackle and pop of fireworks sounds in the distance, their lights bursting in an explosion of colors through the blinds. Wooyoung is sweaty and out of breath but it’s perfect. He made it. He’s home.

“Happy New Year, baby.” He says through harsh pants, laughing softly.

Mingi sounds as awed as he looks, cradling his face as he stares up at him. “I didn’t think you were gonna make it home in time.”

“Neither did I.” Wooyoung admits, leaning down to steal another kiss.

One more kiss turns into another and another, until the two of them are desperately tugging at each others’ clothes. Wooyoung pitches his jacket aside easily enough, but he has to stand to get out of his flight suit. Mingi sits up on his elbows and watches him with his bottom lip dragged between his own teeth, eyes smoldering. He’s never kept secret just how much he enjoys Wooyoung’s uniform.

Wooyoung laughs and rolls his eyes, helping Mingi out of his own clothes, too. For a long while, they just grind together on the floor, but he  _ knows  _ this is bad for Mingi’s back. It’s not ideal for him, either, but comfort is the last thing on his mind right now. He just wants  _ Mingi. _

He eventually drags Mingi to their shared bedroom, where his boyfriend eagerly fishes the lube out from the recesses of the nightstand and deposits it on the bed next to him.

Wooyoung wants to take his time with Mingi, spoil him with every touch and caress...but he’s fucking  _ beat.  _ It’s always rough readjusting to full gravity, he hasn’t slept in almost twenty hours and he did just  _ run  _ here. He’s lucky he hasn’t passed out.

“Tomorrow, you’re mine.” He presses into Mingi’s long neck like a promise as he kisses over his Adam's apple. “And I’m yours. Fuck going out. We’re staying right here. I might be convinced to make a single trip to the kitchen, if coerced with takeout.”

Mingi giggles, his long fingers finding Wooyoung’s waist and holding tight. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Wooyoung says, grabbing the lube and slicking the both of them up. 

Mingi whines, partly in pleasure but also in need. He  _ knows  _ Mingi wants more, and he’s going to give it to him. But not tonight. Tomorrow, once he’s got his bearings and he doesn’t feel like his spine is going to be dragged right out of him.

Wooyoung goads Mingi as he wraps a hand around both of them, his pace ramping up immediately. He isn’t in the business of going slowly, nor is he in the mood.

Eventually, Mingi lays his hand over Wooyoung’s, tightening their grips together. His fingers are longer, reaching all the places that Wooyoung’s don’t, and he hisses at the increase in friction.

Wooyoung is tired and strung out but Mingi is  _ beautiful,  _ his fringe matting against his forehead a little before he brushes it away and presses a kiss there, rutting his hips faster.

Mingi comes first, but Wooyoung isn’t far behind, both of them making a mess of Mingi’s abdomen. It’s only a second later that he rolls off and tries to catch his breath, his vision swimming with black spots for a moment. He closes them, but he must drift off because the next thing he knows,  _ Mingi  _ is cleaning him up, which is virtually unheard of. Mingi very much likes to be taken care of, in  _ all  _ ways, so it’s a rarity for him to take the initiative, even when Wooyoung is worn to hell.

“Hey, just sleep.” Mingi protests when he tries to get up, his vision swimming again. “You  _ just  _ got back. I’m happy to see you, but take a breath. Okay?”

“Okay…” Wooyoung mumbles, feeling himself drifting again. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, my star boy.” Mingi teases, kissing his cheek before settling in next to him.

Wooyoung keeps his eyes open just a little while longer, catching Mingi’s gaze as he cuddles closer with a contented smile.

Wooyoung has seen some beautiful sights; breathtaking starfields, the haze of an aurora arcing over the mountains of a planet whose name he cannot even pronounce...but nothing compares to the way Mingi’s eyes sparkle when he looks at him and smiles, as though they hold more galaxies than Wooyoung will ever see on any spacecraft.

Wooyoung feels at peace in space, he feels like he belongs among his crew, on his ship, no matter where it takes him.

But nothing will ever compare to what it feels like to be  _ home. _

**Author's Note:**

> Did I finish this the day of reveals? Maybe. Don’t judge me. You can find me on twt and CC, @VermillionVamp


End file.
